Twisted Luck (Corban)

The following fictitious events take place in Reality D (Blue)

It was a church day, which meant Corban had gotten less sleep than usual. 

  To the royal family, Maelvish was the day for waking early and offering the kingdom free food, for remembering the dead king and celebrating his supposed godhood.

  Corban didn’t see how dying made anyone a god. He knew tons of people who had died and none of them were gods.

  To Corban, Maelvish meant he’d spent the day before running background checks on everyone who came to the palace for services, and he’d spent the night patrolling the palace and campground for any signs of trouble. It meant he’d spent the morning guarding the temple for services and escorting people back to their campsites if they planned to stay for court tomorrow.

  It meant work wasn’t over yet, but Konrad was busy and Corban intended to steal a nap while things around the palace were quiet.

  He was on his way back from the cafeteria, stomach full of beans and rice and corn flatbreads. The halls were pleasantly quiet considering it was the afternoon of Maelvish, but Corban still ran into someone near the side door to the garden.

  Konrad was the someone, but the guy with him was the someone else. He had short, messy dark hair and he wore an overwhelmed expression. He had the most gorgeous blue eyes and the kind of expressive eyebrows usually favored by actresses in romantic dramas.

  He was confident, even if he was overwhelmed, his body attuned to Konrad like he was the center of the universe.

  “New soldier?” Corban guessed. He could offer to train the guy, get to know him a little.

  “No way,” the guy said, with a voice like a serrated cello. His eyes swept over Corban’s body and lingered on his calves.

  Yes. Thank Maelchor for training shorts that showed off his legs.

  “This is my son who was in Babylon for his childhood,” Konrad explained.

  Maybe no, then. A Konrad son might be off-limits, especially since Konrad knew all of Corban’s worst secrets. He bet Corban was exactly the kind of person Konrad wouldn’t want his son with: too gay, too valuable, too dangerous.

  “Jace,” Konrad continued, “this is Corban. He’s one of the candidates for my position when I retire.”

  Then again, maybe yes. Konrad was talking Corban up a little.

  The guy — Jace — offered his hand. That was a Babylonian thing: Shake a hand, prove you weren’t trying to murder anyone.

  Corban shook it, even though he knew he would spark and give himself away to Konrad. “Hey,” he breathed. He tried to keep the sparks to a minimum in case Konrad was distracted and had somehow forgotten how to read his mind. “I’m Corban.”

  Training shorts were great for showing off calf muscles, but they were less than ideal for hiding the aftereffects of touching the bare skin of someone you had a bond to.

  That was the problem: He had a bond to Jace. The undine bond, a trait he’d inherited from his mother, was expert at picking out life partners and shoving the attraction in your face. Or in your training shorts, if you wanted to get awkward.

  “Jace,” Jace said. He looked at Corban’s calves and then at his training shorts. “Are you a soldier?”

  “Yeah,” Corban said in a rush. “I guard things.” Not things. He almost never guarded things, because no one here valued objects half as much as they valued each other. “People. The princess. Are you…” He wasn’t a soldier, so what was he? “You’re a person. What do you do?”

  Jace glanced at Konrad. “I think I’m half a person. I’m in a band.”

  Half a person? What kind of insanity had Konrad stuffed his head with? “Everybody’s a person,” Corban started, and then his brain caught up with what Jace had said about being in a band. 

  Corban was by no means an expert on every band in every realm, but there was a band he loved that just happened to have a guitar player named Jace. It had to be coincidence. “Which band?” Just to be sure…

  “Chainskull Death,” Jace said.

  He was a breathing, sexy miracle. Why did he have to be Konrad’s son?

  “Jace Nygaard,” Corban breathed. He reminded his brain that its job was for thinking, and not for fantasizing, and definitely not for making his training shorts feel so snug.

  “Selig, now,” Konrad corrected. Of course, a Konrad son would be a Selig.

  Jace met Corban’s eyes. Flecks of gold shone through — was he Gancanagh like his dad? “Nygaard, still.”

  Corban’s heart raced: Jace wasn’t just Konrad’s son, he had Konrad’s style of soft but stubborn, the understated enemy feel. It was admirable on Konrad, but on Jace…Corban tried not to melt.

  “I love Destiny’s Oasis,” he said. It was one of the band’s more recent songs, about a hidden post-apocalyptic oasis where everything was still normal. Corban had listened to it just this morning. “It’s probably my favorite song ever.”

  There was no way to express to Jace how much the idea of a break from destiny — for a secret prince whose entire life was orchestrated by others — was appealing.

  “Ja?” Jace said. “I wrote that one.”

  He got Corban, on a fundamental level. Something in Corban (though not in his pants — that continued to be an ongoing issue) melted at that thought. “I love it. I see your concerts for work sometimes.”

  “For work?” Jace said.

  “Not all your fans are human.” Talise had been. A handful of other fairies had as well, and Corban fit in well as the right age and tattoo-coverage to be a good concert-goer.

  “But they’re people,” Jace said, like that was up for debate. “Mostly. Maybe some dogs. Not. I didn’t call fans…Howling, at concerts, is something we experience. From real dogs. Not people dressed up as fluffy animals. Human fans. People.” He cringed.

  Corban just laughed. He’d seen the people in Babylon who dressed as animals and was equally baffled by them. He knew a couple of people who might not mind animal cosplay, especially if it helped them blend in among animals, but the thing Babylonians did was definitely not that.

  “Are you here for long?” he asked Jace. He tried not to sound too hopeful. He had a life, obligations, a job that never ended. He had no business flirting with someone, especially not a Konrad son.

  “I was kidnapped,” Jace said.

  That made no sense. No one here would kidnap a Babylonian, even if they were Konrad’s son. It violated too many treaties.

  “Do you need me to rescue you?” Corban offered, another flirt. He had to stop, but he didn’t want to.

  “Ja,” Jace said more urgently. “I’m trying to get back to Babylon. Konrad…was going to take me there right now.”

  Right. He looked like it when they were walking down the hall away from the only room where you could transport.

  Corban made a noise that suggested how unlikely that was, and Jace sighed. “He won’t let me.”

  It had to be a misunderstanding. “Why did he kidnap you?”

  Jace shrugged. “I refused to accept him as my father, and my life is in some sort of grave danger.”

  Grave danger…Corban didn’t know of any threats to Konrad’s line, but he knew of one from Konrad’s line: The Gancanagh Curse, which was fatal to women. Jace had normal eyes, not the typical gancanagh black opal, but it might be a glamour or a magic to suppress it. Maybe Konrad needed him to get a tattoo.

  In which case, Corban could at least help Jace relax. “What if I kidnap you from him?” It was a public service, really.

  “Do it,” Jace urged.

  They were on the same page, then. Corban grabbed Jace’s hand — sparked, of course, as soon as their skin touched — and transported using special travel packs. He took Jace to his barracks dormitory, where he slept about half the time. The room was spartan, just a bed and table with a small stack of clothes. Under the table, he had a shelf with snacks, and a mini fridge with drinks.

  “You can hide out here as long as you want,” he promised. “I have games, snacks, wards on the room…”

  Jace, still holding Corban’s hand, pulled closer to Corban and kissed him. He stepped away from Corban. “Sorry. That was forward. I don’t usually get this way. Maybe I’m the fanboy.”

  Tendrils of Corban’s fire magic danced in the air between them. Corban held his breath long enough to focus on sucking the fire back into himself, and then focused on the matter at hand: Jace. “That was good,” he assured him. He kissed, deeper and more chaotic as his undine bond consumed him. “I’m definitely a fanboy.”